THE BIGGEST PROBLEM PLAGUING VIDEO GAMES

“We all get swept up in the hype machine. Nobody is Immune to that.” – Steven Cojocaru

I’ve been wanting to talk about this for quite a long time now, here we go.

Ever since I’ve been playing video games there is a massive pattern that keeps happening and it is to do with hype, hype you say? Well that’s not a bad thing!
You’d be wrong. Oh so wrong…
See when a game is announced, for example let us go for the new game by Blizzard: Overwatch

Reaper from Overwatch

It was announced and got a huge rally of applause and excitement by the crouds, understandably so as it does look pretty sweet, that character roster has me drooling; even though that is definitely not the point, what came after this was quite a sight, Videos being released about how it is a Team Fortress 2 clone.

The moment this game came out people started comparing it to the closest game they could and with the art style being similar and having the goal of killing the other team and objectives, who wouldn’t right? But there is the problem, people are going to expect something from a game that hasn’t come out yet, a game that all we have seen is alpha gameplay, you heard me correctly it is alpha gameplay which means there could be revamps, changes and balances to the entire game, heck the game could get scrapped completely though that is highly unlikely unless Blizzard put it into secret for 8 years, I’m looking at you project titan.

Now you might be saying “What does this have to do with hype?” well it’s the expectancy of what people see through game trailers and E3 demos.

Taking Assassin’s Creed: Unity as an example it looked flawless, superbly well done and looking to be one of the best AC games out there, well of course Black Flag takes that place because ya’know… pirates and boats.
But then it was released, heck the game was unplayable on most systems for the PC, the console port was buggy and framerates were under 30FPS on even the most heavy loaded systems.

Another case of this is Watchdogs, whoopsie I mean Watch_Dogs.
Another scenario of the game looking fantastic, so much so I was on the verge of preordering it and there is no need to preorder any game so I was excited.
It came out and the framerates tanked, driving physics were all wrong and people were literally stuck inside of buildings. It was horrific, trust me.
Watch_Dogs, although having a rough start was the most sold game on every platform, the bugs did seem to mostly affect the PC’s, lots did transfer over but generally Ubisoft release lots of bug fixes to go with them.
Especially that 3GB update for Assasin’s Creed: Unity eh?

Now my first thought when both of these kind of linked was with Ubisoft, now I don’t blame them fully quite honestly and infact I think these are both good games. But it is the deadline that kicked in for both those games, and they were rushed so of course they are buggy and you might say to yourself “I’d rather a longer waiting time for a game than bugs.”
But this is where it gets interesting, so why are these deadlines here? For two reasons, the publishers and the community who want the games, yes that means you. Remember how you was drooling over Watch_Dogs and couldn’t wait for it to come out? That’s how most people felt, it was announced in June 2012 and came out 2 years later! 2 years of drooling, most people were expecting it not to come but this only increased the “hype” of the game.
2 years, woah Ubisoft that’s a lot of time to put into this game, this is going to be great. Possibly one of the best games of the year! …Which is what we all thought, the game sold record amounts but it was a flop in the actual entertainment sector and mostly sits in peoples shelves and steam libraries never getting played again. That £50 was worth it, it seems right?

It seemed all the hype that it generated actually made it go into negative reviews, possibly because they did have 5 years of development time but no one took all the other games Ubisoft make into account either. Many people outraged by the sheer lack of effort put into this game and really stabbed at Ubisoft for the game they made.
Now here, just for you all I will give you a quick list of the most overhyped games that have come out lately.

• Watch_Dogs
• Destiny
• Titanfall
• Advanced Warfare
• Dead Rising 4
• Assassin’s Creed: Unity
• Farcry 4 (Maybe?)
• The Order

Now if you look at all these games the biggest thing connecting them is that they are all AAA (Triple A) games, and so made by the biggest companies so players even expect the most out of these companies to make a well oiled game but granted some of these games aren’t buggy and had didn’t have bad launches; they bring me on to my next topic in “hype” and that is how the game doesn’t live up to the expectation that of the players mind.

Now this is all speculation on my part on how the players mind works in this topic.

You’ve been playing video games since you was at your friends house playing the first Mario, and you’ve seen quite a lot in the gaming world! You’re enveloped inside video games and know quite a lot of them.
So, your nostalgic side kicks in and you remember Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time. You know the usual? And your favourite games like Half Life 2, Borderlands 1, and the rich story lines of GTA and Final Fantasy because how can anyone even compare to games Kingdom Heart? But see this is where the problem stands, is that us gamers have seen too many games. We have our favourite games and it affects our opinion on the games we play now, those buggy releases? Happened all the time! Games on old consoles had so many bugs you would not believe, but as time goes on we start to get more perceptive to these things, infact many of us try to trigger the bugs to get our own back on the games, like a toddler getting his toy off his parent and throwing it on the ground after 2 minutes and then wondering why it’s broken.

This is because there hasn’t been an all out amazing game that has come out, completely changing the way that we see video games. It has all been the same thing for quite a while now infact I think it started around the time Mass Effect 3 came out but I blame him for nothing of course! We want the next Half Life 2, we want the next Super Mario 64. We want the next Call of Duty 4! But then we have the colliding opinion of, we want innovation and we want new things, it is all the same! This puts developers of games and especially Triple A companies at a bit of a sore spot where they have to cater these two different opinions.

Imagine someone walks up to you and goes to you “Hey, I like old military! You know with the Nazi’s and stuff!” and you’re like “Okay I will make that for you.” reluctantly. Then the other guy comes up to you and slaps you round the face “Hey military is not where you should go, future military is where you should be!” And you look at him with a tear just about to fall out from your eye and go “Okay I will make that.. for you.”
It is the people that affect the way developers make games, as much as you think you don’t control what they make, you buy the game right? You play it, you demand the constant command of their online servers 24/7 no matter what. They wish not to anger their audiences for their games especially if it could lose them forever, then the colliding problem hits because how can they keep you happy when you want one of the best games all time made every time they make a game? Because I wouldn’t call all the games that have been overhyped bad games, they are good games but the people who play them throw them overboard with an anchor and ruin the experience.
So what’s the biggest problem plaguing video games? It’s you, the consumer is the problem. You push deadlines and you push the game to be both innovative and a better game than your all time classic but still not being too complicated right?
Don’t worry, I’m sure they can continue making sequels for your favourite games right?

I just want to clarify that I do the same as you, and we all do it without realising, I mean how can we help it? I want Half Life 3 as much as you.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU HYPE FOR.